September 7, 2016
Moldova
Summer school for the political participation of young people took place in the autonomous territorial entity of Gagauzia in the south of Moldavia. This provided teenagers from ten different urban areas to discuss the topics relating the participation of teenagers in social and political life.
Young representatives from eight non-profit organisations also attended this program, they asked questions together with the other people like “Who is the political representative?” or “How to become a political country representative?” They also covered topics like: “a pyramid of political participation”, “responsibility of political representatives toward electors”, “problems in society”, and “the ideal society”. Participants also learnt how to recognise the attitude of a political party regarding human rights and European values during election campaigns. Critical evaluation of news from media was also discussed and they tried “reading between lines” of certain articles.
The summer school also accepted thirteen politicians from different levels of state administration and self-government, they spoke about their work and activities aimed at country, region or town development. They motivated their listeners to think about taking up a similar track and shared valuable experiences from their successes, they pointed out what was helpful to exert and explained why they think it is necessary to do something for others. Afterwards Valentina Kaledji – General Editor of Gagauz Media - spoke about independent media.
Participants, based on the knowledge they acquired, put together a Joint Youth Declaration which highlighted the main problems of young people in Gagauzia face and they proposed some solutions. Afterwards the Declaration was sent to the Local Youth Parliament. In autumn it will be introduced to political representatives of their villages, towns and cities.
Caritas Czech Republic endeavours to actively assist Moldavian Youth in decisive processes because they are not very well orientated in political issues and lack the appropriate institutional setup and organisations.
You can find the article in original here.
The project for the support of democratization, development of civil society and democratic rights in Gagauzia has been supported by the Programme of Transformation Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
